So it turns out that slavery did cause the Civil War. So says Bob McDonnell, Republican governor of Virginia — a student of the Better Late Than Never School of Political Damage Control.

On Tuesday the governor issued a proclamation that declared April as Confederate History Month, noted that “all Virginians” honored the Confederacy’s sacrifice and, amazingly, included no mention of slavery or slaves. Never mind that nearly half a million black slaves lived in Virginia at the time, or that large numbers of Virginians (especially non-slave owners) opposed secession.

Governor xKen Dollx McDonnell has also proclaimed that new currency will be used to commemorate Confederate History Month.
That’s Governor xKen Dollx McDonnell on the left and his wife, Maureen xStepfordx McDonnell on the right. As you can see from the picture on the bill, there was none of the “bad” slavery in Virginia, and that’s why the governor forgot to mention it. Look closely, and you’ll see that those aren’t hoes the slaves are holding. They’re golf clubs, and the slaves were having a helluva good time! If not for Virginia slavery, we wouldn’t have Tiger Woods today.

I tried to find Congresswomen from Virginia, but there don’t seem to be any. And, yeah, I know that Princess Sarah isn’t technically from the South, but she loves that whole states’ rights/secessiony thing. But I digress. Back to the article:

Basically, there are now two proclamations — one that glorifies the Confederacy, the other that wallows in Virginia’s historical guilt. (In addition to being evil, vicious, etc., slavery, said the governor in proclamation no. 2, “has left a stain on the soul of this state and nation.”)

…snip…

Let’s be fair. While McDonnell was raked through the coals as a candidate last fall for his now-notorious, retrograde 20-year-old thesis, his comportment during the campaign was moderate, civil, substantive and reassuring. Ditto his performance since his inauguration in January. Understated and affable, the governor took pains to align himself with what is undeniably a purple state, and one that has shown distaste for divisive politics.

That’s why the first proclamation — the one that glossed over history — was so jarring.

…snip…

It took more than 24 hours, but McDonnell finally got that. That’s good. What disturbing, though, is how stubborn he was to get it, initially downplaying slavery’s significance as just one of “any number of aspects to that conflict between the states.” (What history books has this guy been reading?)

What really seems to have opened the governor’s eyes was one person: Sheila Johnson. Johnson, the African-American co-founder of Black Entertainment Television, was a key backer — the key backer — of McDonnell’s campaign. Her support was so important to McDonnell that barely a day passed when he didn’t mention it, and she was featured front-and-center in his campaign advertising.

…snip…

For a solid 24 hours, McDonnell and his aides defended and excused the first proclamation. But the wind suddenly went out of their defense shortly after Johnson issued the following damning statement Wednesday afternoon:

“I must condemn Gov. McDonnell’s proclamation honoring ‘Confederate History Month’ and its insensitive disregard of Virginia’s complicated and painful history, the remnants of which many Virginians still wrestle with today,“ said Johnson, an African-American business owner.

“The complete omission of slavery from an official government document, which purports to be a call for Virginians to ‘understand’ and ‘study’ their history, is both academically flawed and personally offensive. If Virginians are to celebrate their ‘shared history’ as this proclamation suggests, then the whole truth of this history must be recognized and not evaded.”

Some neo-Confederates aren’t happy about Governor Bob McDonnell’s apology this afternoon for failing to mention slavery in his proclamation of Confederate History Month.

In an interview with TPMmuckraker, Brandon Dorsey, of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, called McDonnell’s move “an insult,” and charged that the governor had undermined the purpose of the resolution,” and damaged himself with his core supporters. But another member of the group disagreed, saying he supported the apology “one hundred percent.”

…snip…

Contacted this afternoon by TPMmuckraker, Dorsey said he was unaware of McDonnell’s apology. After it was read to him, Dorsey said the apology “comes as a shock,” and accused the governor of “pandering to people who never would have voted for him nor supported any of his policies.”

Making clear that he was speaking only for himself, Dorsey said that the apology “completely undermined the purpose of the resolution.” He added: “We would probably have rather not had a proclamation whatsoever, than for him to add a clause that says that everything that we support and everything we hold dear has to do with slavery.”

But Brag Bowling, who uses the title Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, said Dorsey was “off base.” “I support Governor McDonnell one hundred percent,” said Bowling. “I think he did a courageous thing even issuing the proclamation.”

“It’s not an insult,” Bowling added. “No one in their right mind is in support of slavery.”

Last month, McDonnell issued a statement confirming that discrimination was illegal, after Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli had advised the state’s universities that they could not legally ban discrimination against gays.

i think the whole episode is pretty disgusting. there was a good article about it here. it’s obvious that mcdonnell was pandering, not to the small percentage of people in virginia who still go for this confederate bullshit, but to all the teabaggers nationwide to get his foot in the door so he can run for president one day. tweety called it today. he said that it was a win/win for gov. ken doll. he panders to the neoconfederates, and when he gets caught with his pants down, he apologizes. the neoconfederates console themselves by saying that he had to apologize, but he didn’t really mean it. he covers his ass with his “apology” for later on when he’s running for prez.

Growing up in the south during the centenial formed my child mind to the southern “cause”. It was 1961, opening day of Six Flags Over Texas and the thing that impressed me the most was the call to arms in the confederate section. It was actually a theme park back then. The officer in his spledid yellow and gray unform and sword, the small band of troops. I used to wear one of those gray kepi that you could buy at the dime store (they had blue ones too but nobody bought them) and lots of battle flags. Got a book that Xmas showing all the great battles. There was the TV show about the two brothers fighting on different sides. Had a board game we used a lot to refight it enough for the south to win. The romanticism about all this skews the brain from accepting the fact that the cause was WRONG. Combine the miltary culture left over from the Mexican war with the bad agriculture of one crop economy based on slave labor and you have the CSA. Politics of section had dominated DC well over a decade and the compromise of 1850 is the only reason this tragedy didn’t start a decade earlier. It took me a long time to rationalize the failure of Jeff Davis and his cronies to try this bold and stupid idea based on monopoly cotton selling for $50 a bale. And what did we get for our trouble. Four horrible years of warfare, 600,000+ dead, 2,000,000 causualties overall, a generation of amputees and morphine addicts, lots of orphans and widows, devastation and destruction that put us back close to a hundred years. We were WRONG. Any fellow southerner who has trouble with that assessment I offer the following advice: take the stars and bars, roll up tightly and stick it up your ass.

Yes it is Nonnie. Like Jerry I grew up in Texas with this rationalization nonsense. However, it even goes beyond the crime of running an economy based upon forced servitude.

The Confederacy was not only wrong. It went completely against the principles of the United States of America. Britain and Europe didn’t just like the South because of the cotton. The South was an extension of the European feudal system with its own aristocracy. They used racism to scare the poor whites (the vast majority of Southerners) and keep them in line. They still do and the tragic thing is that so many people in the south don’t realize their being screwed. So where did this philosophy go? It found a home in the Republican Party thanks to Nixon, Buchanan and the southern strategy.

That’s one reason I’ll never buy a late inclusion of the real issue with a tepid mea culpa. It’s just an attempt to mollify while keeping at this same treasonous game they’ve been playing forever.

Wow, Jerry’s got the cure for what ails those Faulknerian dreamers that still want to hang onto their ideal south same as the dopes who get all soapy about the 50’s as some halcyon era of American pride and family values. I guess they were as long as you were white and chilling in your bomb shelter. It still boggles the mind that people are walking around with this kind of garbage between their ears and even more baffling is the way they are able to get themselves elected to positions of authority. There is a huge overlap of racists and teabaggers so it appears this was a ploy to add to a base that is, at best, all ready pretty base.

My proof to rebut that piece of stupidity has always been Alexander H. Stephens’ “cornerstone” speech.

“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

Alex Stephens, by the way, was the Vice-President of the Confederate States of America. I take this as an absolute clincher in the argument.

Most people who talk about how their love for the Confederacy is a love of “history, not hate” don’t even know who Stephens was. I think that this calls into question how deeply they’re interested in history.

It is long, long since time that we stopped celebrating Confederate history as anything other than a filthy stain on American history, much as how modern Germans view the Nazi era and how most Catholics I know view the Inquisitions and Crusades.

If you have a strong enough stomach, the rest of the “Cornerstone Speech” is here:

the raisin has the most awesome commenters ever! the teabaggers, just like their fearless leaders, glenn blechhhh, princess sarah, and joe the not-plumber, know nothing about history. i would never describe myself as a student of history, but i probably know more than the average teabagger. i would challenge princess to a history challenge any day of the week, and for as little as i know, i would beat her hands down. the same goes for science, math, literature, and just about any other subject.

Word is an invitation will be sent to Tea Partiers and Rethuglicans for a private Tea Party and Cross Burning. The invitation is R.S.V.P. and B.Y.O.H.A.R – Bring Your Own Hood And Robe. Now all McConnell has to do is head on down to Texas and he can get in on the madcap Texas Textbook History Rewrite.

i’ve been mistyping mcdonnell’s name for the last few days. i think it’s easy to mix up the names mcconnell and mcdonnell, because chin starts with a C, so you don’t associate it with mitch yertle mcconnell. :wink:

Thanks for the support Jeb and rastamick and raisinettes. Didn’t mean to get into a major rant but suffered from hearing Buchanan defend the idiocy earlier in the day and it just pushed all my buttons. The danger of “celebrating the past” can best be illustrated by the unbelievable veteran parades that they do now in the Baltic states to honor the militiamen and einsatzgruppen who taught the Germans how to kill wholesale lots of civilians by shooting them in the neck in the woods outside Vilna and a hundred other places. This became SOP in occupied Russia as millions of villagers met this fate. For some reason, the Germans don’t celebrate.